I OFTEN wonder if Northern Ireland will ever change. I have written about this ceaseless pondering many times over the years.
As a mother, I often beat myself up about if bringing children up in a place that has so many issues that never seem to get resolved has really done them a disservice.
Everyone is the product of their own experiences, and my experiences of this place will be vastly different to anyone else's.
As a journalist of over 20 years, I got sight of the underbelly of Northern Ireland that a lot of people – in their jobs or life – might not be exposed to. I spent days in courtrooms and nights at security alerts, I saw up close the grip paramilitaries have on communities and the brutality they inflicted. I spent my summers covering Orange Order marches and my Easters at republican ones, absorbing strong battle cries and angry words shouted from podiums. I have been threatened and intimidated and harassed and saw someone murdered. I have interviewed young Catholic and Protestant people who have been beaten because of a football shirt they wore. I have sat with families on the peace lines of Belfast, terrified in their homes as street violence raged. I have interviewed bonfire builders unashamedly holding signs that read 'Kill All Taigs'.
So perhaps my perspective of this place is skewed. I am the product of my experiences. And my experiences mirror a sick society that has been festering for many years and needs help and support to get properly back on its feet. We've had 23 years now since the Good Friday Agreement to do that, but in the last few years it seems we have not only stalled but have been walking backwards.
There's an election on the horizon and as always the rhetoric is getting darker and the divisions deeper as politicians fight for their positions. The damage being done by the actions of a few will take years to repair, just in time for the next batch of elections to happen and the next round of toxicity.
Add that to our summers of discontent and the burning of each other's flags, effigies of each other's heroes and the disgusting taunts about each other's tragedies: it's not a recipe for healing, peace and progress we have here.
I posted about this very subject at the weekend. I asked if people from outside NI spend half their life despairing at the state of place they live, wishing they could live somewhere, anywhere else. Somewhere even relatively 'normal' even half the time. I wondered if someone growing up in England or Scotland or France felt the same unsettling sensation, being so very drawn to a place, where your heart belongs, but being so utterly repulsed by it at times.
The responses were varied. A lot of people said that they felt the same way, total despair at Northern Ireland at times. Some said that they left years ago and never came back. Others told me to stop peddling negativity, that other places are worse. Some told me to leave Northern Ireland – in far more colourful language not suitable for a family newspaper – and not let the door hit me on the way out. Others insisted that Northern Ireland was beautiful, and I should stop criticising it.
I know this place is beautiful, I have seen every inch of it, from the peace lines to the coastlines. That does not mean that I don't want it to be better, that I believe it can be so much better. That's the thing with us Northern Irish people. Our baseline was daily murders, our towns and cities lying in rubble after bombings, our streets militarised, feeling fear in our homes, and everything above that – which has been what the last 23 years has been – is good enough for us. It'll do.
It's not good enough. We deserve better than this. We deserve better than security alerts and dangerous rhetoric and threats and people feeling afraid to go into certain areas because of their religion or nationality. We deserve better than paramilitaries still operating so vibrantly in our post-conflict society.
But unfortunately we also deserve what we tolerate, and we tolerate this type of behaviour here. And if we tolerate and normalise it, so will our children, this cycle will continue and nothing will ever change.
